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Can a bone have a bullet shot out of it?


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Take the bone, hollow it out, pour molten metal in and voila, increased strength and resistance to fracture.

 

Why go through all that? Drill it out and press a metal sleeve in it. It seems I remember something about a tree cannon having been made at one time so a reinforced bone seems plausible....

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You know, I think I know where he's going with this story. Suppose a terrorist had a gun barrel inserted into one of his arm bones. He could use it in a clandestined way to assassinate a world figure like the president.

 

I would think a carbon fiber gun with carbon fiber bullets would suffice for such a task....

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If one wanted to conceal a single-shot gun inside a bone within your body, I think the best scheme would be to make a special cartridge that completely enclosed the bullet, then implant it using the same surgical technique used to insert the metal pins used to repair fractures. Rather than using a conventional impact-detonated primer, an electric igniter similar to the kind used for model rockets would allow the gun to be triggered, with the electric lead wires passed through the skin, or to some implanted triggering device.

 

A more complicated approach would be to fabricate a completely custom gun, or fit an existing small handgun, that could replace the end of some long bone (eg: the radius or ulna), and attach it using a surgical procedure similar to a joint replacement. As in the previous scheme, a substantial challenge would be the mechanism to trigger the gun. In this scheme, some sort of rod/cable connection between the guns safety and trigger and some small bone(s) (eg: carpal or metacarpal) might be feasible.

 

Since Masterqman intends to write whatever gun design he decides on into a story, it’s worth noting that while the metal-projectile bone-guns speculated on in this thread would be visually hard to detect, they’d be obviously visible on x-rays. A small, single shot (or possibly multi-shot, using a design like the various Metal Storm systems, while still visible to x-ray, might pass an ordinary building entrance or hand-held metal-detector undetected. The larger, more complicated type described above would likely trigger a metal-detector.

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its for a story not a project

 

OK then you can do what you want. ;)

 

I did think you were trying to do this on your own as a real project and my answers were in relation to that aspect.

 

Theres a lot of nut cases* out there and I cant always tell the difference.

 

*knows someone who blew a couple fingers off making pipe bombs for fun.

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  • 4 weeks later...
In that case, tell us more about the story and why the character in this novel wishes to do such an unusual thing. Why a bone and not some more useful material such as steel? Give us a little hint as to the plot involved Master........., you've really got my curiosity goin now...........................Infy

 

Acshuly (i hope i spelled that rite) your plot you thought off is completely different than what you were thinking.The plot is basicly evil guy terorising galaxy, 4 war people try to kill evil dude, stuff happens :) and also the one that trys to use the bone thing is one of the 4 (not the evil dude if you were wondering) !:protest:SPOILERS FOR BOOK:protest:!

 

 

 

ones a vampire, ones a human, ones a werewolf, and the other one is a human too.

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  • 9 months later...
Acshuly (i hope i spelled that rite) your plot you thought off is completely different than what you were thinking.The plot is basicly evil guy terorising galaxy, 4 war people try to kill evil dude, stuff happens :D and also the one that trys to use the bone thing is one of the 4 (not the evil dude if you were wondering) !:protest:SPOILERS FOR BOOK:protest:!

 

 

 

ones a vampire, ones a human, ones a werewolf, and the other one is a human too.

 

lol srry, but that didn't answer your question :hihi:... the guy just kills :) people (kinda morbid book :) ) and take the bones ;) and makes them into weapons :).

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Fo' sure.

This is the strangest thread I've come across in a while...

Creepy, even. :fluffy:

 

Masterqman’s story is clearly more in the supernatural horror genre than the sci-fi thriller genre I initially took it for.

 

I can’t say I find the idea of a gun made out of bones particularly scary, compared to the usual metal and plastic kind. Bones seem to me to lend themselves more to the pokey-sticky than the bang-shooty kind of weapons, though, being roughly the same sort of stuff as horn, you could make a pretty good bow out of it.

 

Masterqman, have you given any thought to making an evil, creepy bow or crossbow out of your story’s victims bones, rather than a firearm? :phones: Not only would it work better, but it could be made out of 100% victim-derived materials. Bodies are full of strong, useful sinews, not just bones.

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Creepy, even. :(

 

Masterqman’s story is clearly more in the supernatural horror genre than the sci-fi thriller genre I initially took it for.

 

I can’t say I find the idea of a gun made out of bones particularly scary, compared to the usual metal and plastic kind. Bones seem to me to lend themselves more to the pokey-sticky than the bang-shooty kind of weapons, though, being roughly the same sort of stuff as horn, you could make a pretty good bow out of it.

 

Masterqman, have you given any thought to making an evil, creepy bow or crossbow out of your story’s victims bones, rather than a firearm? :doh: Not only would it work better, but it could be made out of 100% victim-derived materials. Bodies are full of strong, useful sinews, not just bones.

he make swords, spears, throwing axes, bombs, so every weapon he uses is made of bone

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he make swords, spears, throwing axes, bombs, so every weapon he uses is made of bone
You’d best take a careful look at the human body, and try your hand at making some of these things out of cow or pig bones.

 

The longest bone in the human body (the femur, or thigh bone) is about .45 m (18 inches) long – arguably a good length for a shortsword or a long knife, but not really a proper or very intimidating length for a true sword.

 

Spears present a similar problem. To make one entirely of human bones, you’d have to fit and lash several bones together, which, without ferruling with something harder, like metal, or a lot of cord or sinew, would be difficult to impossible. A bone spear tip on a wood shaft, however, is very serviceable.

 

A decent axe bone throwing axe would be likewise challenging. Flat bones like the pelvis, scapula, and skull, are fairly thin and curvy. Only weight-bearing bones like the femur are large and dense. I’d be surprised to see an axe made out of bone the size of human ones that could be made to stick into a wood target, let alone do much harm to a person. (In my experience, it’s hard to get an axe made of anything to be very dangerous when thrown, but that’s on to a different subject)

 

Bone can’t be made very explosive, so obviously a bone bomb would have to be less than 100% bone. Bomb weapons – grenades, etc. – injure by throwing sharp, dense fragments. Bone, like wood, isn’t very dense, and breaks into splinters and dust particles that don’t fly very far. So a bone bomb would be, I think, at worst an eye hazard, but mostly a waste of explosive.

 

As best I can reason it, the only effective weapons I can see being made entirely from human bones are knives, clubs, and sharp/pointy hammers. Throw in some sinew, and, as I mentioned above, I think you could get a decent arrow/dart-thrower.

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